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Immigration became an especially thorny and publicly discussed issue with the so-called Refugee Crisis beginning in 2015. The stance of the Czech and Polish governments was dominated by strong anti-Muslim and anti-immigration rhetoric. Still, both countries have witnessed a steady increase in mainly short-term immigration from various Asian countries such as Bangladesh or Pakistan ever since. This paper analyses Czech and Polish migration policies against the backdrop of a historically constructed notion of anti-illegal immigration policy, and category of temporary migration, coupled with the problematic nature of debt-financed migration in Asia. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Czechia and Poland (2018-2021), in-depth and semi-structured interviews with migration experts, academic and grey literature, official documents, and the method of Accidental ethnography, this paper argues that silencing of actual labor immigration in political communication while employing anti-migration rhetoric represents a discursive gap typical for liberal democracies. It further concludes that rendering migrant labor as a temporary commodity and turning a blind eye on recruitment of international migrants represents a continuity practice of migrant labor subordination within the nation-state, originating during colonialism and the advent of capitalism in the nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Palliative care is insufficiently integrated in the continuum of care for older people. It is unclear to what extent healthcare policy for older people includes elements of palliative care and thus supports its integration. Aim: (1) To develop a reference framework for identifying palliative care contents in policy documents; (2) to determine inclusion of palliative care in public policy documents on healthcare for older people in 13 rapidly ageing countries. Design: Directed documentary analysis of public policy documents (legislation, policies/strategies, guidelines, white papers) on healthcare for older people. Using existing literature, we developed a reference framework and data extraction form assessing 10 criteria of palliative care inclusion. Country experts identified documents and extracted data. Setting: Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, England, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain. Results: Of 139 identified documents, 50 met inclusion criteria. The most frequently addressed palliative care elements were coordination and continuity of care (12 countries), communication and care planning, care for family, and ethical and legal aspects (11 countries). Documents in 10 countries explicitly mentioned palliative care, nine addressed symptom management, eight mentioned end-of-life care, and five referred to existing palliative care strategies (out of nine that had them). Conclusions: Health care policies for older people need revising to include reference to end-of-life care and dying and ensure linkage to existing national or regional palliative care strategies. The strong policy focus on care coordination and continuity in policies for older people is an opportunity window for palliative care advocacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper studies how unions used two types of resources, namely, access to national legislation/policy and to collective bargaining, to improve working conditions in healthcare and in agency work in Czechia and Slovakia. It examines how these two types of institutional resources interact, whether they are potentially in competition and how this affects union revitalization. Unions' post-2008 strategies in the two sectors converged towards political action due to their preference for legislative regulation of issues previously bargained about or unregulated. The paper argues that extensive use of institutional safeguards contributes to improving working conditions; however, prioritizing political action may weaken other types of union strategies and undermine future access to collective bargaining. In other words, extensive utilization of one institutional resource (legislation) may gradually weaken other types of resources (collective bargaining) and thereby undermine the overall revitalization capacity of trade unions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Homeless people were a new sight in the post-1989 Czech Republic, as the previous regime effectively criminalized homelessness. Thus, in the 1990s, the new visibility of homeless people was a shock to the public eye. This paper is based on a longitudinal study of how, based on this new visibility, the representations of homeless people developed throughout the 1989–2015 period. The paper focuses on the interplay between physical visibility of homelessness and its visibility for public policy. It introduces a threefold theoretical model of how the former is transformed into the latter: I argue that, to be recognized as "problematic" in public space, a group must (a) be recognized as a distinct category (categorical visibility), (b) be recognized as a threat to the civil order (moral visibility), and (c) that public policy must have legal instruments to perceive and address the issue (the eyes and arms of public policy). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the regulatory approaches to open access passenger rail competition. This kind of competition has developed substantially in the EU during the past decade. There have been major entries into the national main lines in Italy, Austria, the Czech Republic, and Sweden. These entries have been very popular with passengers and rail ridership has gone up substantially. However, there have also been costs to these entries. The operations of the new entrants are diminishing economies of density, leading to higher unit costs. Further challenges include cherry-picking behaviour, scarce infrastructure capacity, tariff disintegration, and long-term sustainability. The major question is whether the social benefits outweigh the costs. This paper aims to review emerging evidence in the field of open access entries and approaches to their regulation. The scope of this paper is open access passenger rail entries in Europe after 2000 with a particular emphasis on the major entries that took place in Italy, Austria, the Czech Republic, and Sweden after 2011. The contribution of this article to the existing literature is threefold. Firstly, it provides an up-to-date review of open access entries in Europe. Secondly, it combines the results of simulation studies with empirical evidence to provide an overview of market impacts. Lastly, it reviews the spectrum of regulatory approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to propose a typology of Czech consumers with respect to their attitudes toward the country of origin when purchasing beverages. Attention is paid to four commonly purchased beverage categories: beer, wine, tea and coffee. Using the Computer Assisted Web Interviewing method, the total number of fully completed questionnaires obtained was 396. The selection of respondents was determined by gender and age quotas. The measurement of attitudes involved utilizing a set of 22 statements concerning the beverage origin which were evaluated on a five-point scale. As confirmed by the research results, in each beverage category, the country of origin influences consumers' purchasing decisions differently. When purchasing wine, Czech consumers most commonly verify the country from which it originates. The origin is also important to them when it comes to beer, with the strongest preference for beer produced in their own country. The country from which the beverage originates has a considerably lower importance for coffee and is the least important when buying tea. Based on respondents' attitudes toward the country of beverage origin, four consumer segments were identified, namely "Experimenters," "Picky consumers," "Patriots," and "Pro-European consumers." Factor and cluster analysis were used for this purpose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies on the drivers of public sector wage setting (PSWS) within the broader political and economic conditions in Central and Eastern Europe are scarce. To fill this gap, the paper questions to what extent the export-led growth model, based on foreign direct investment as driver of economic growth, influenced PSWS in Czechia and Slovakia after the 2008–2009 crisis. The paper provides new evidence of the appropriateness of the growth model literature, integrated by consideration of global production chains integration, for understanding PSWS in CEE conditions. The analysis shows that PSWS followed institutional traditions and established practices that only indirectly related to the countries' export orientation and integration into global production chains. The indirect growth model impact on PSWS in CEE conditions is channeled through a strong role of the statutory minimum wage, which serves as a wage benchmark both for the export sector and PSWS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academics usually look for constitutional conventions in Westminster-style democracies, such as the United Kingdom, Canada, or Australia. Nevertheless, growing evidence from practice shows that constitutional conventions are similarly essential attributes of even substantially different political regimes. This article is the first paper to systematically deal with constitutional conventions in the Czech Republic. To be more specific, I identify eight existing constitutional conventions there: (1) respect for the parliamentary majority, (2) institution of a formateur, (3) simultaneous existence of two prime ministers, (4) new cabinet's statement of policy, (5) delegation of negotiation and ratification of international treaties, (6) appointment of a (vice-)governor of the Czech National Bank without a countersignature, (7) missing signature of the president under laws, and (8) single vice-chairperson of the Supreme Court. On one hand, the scrutiny shows that constitutional conventions play an already established and important role even in a Central European democracy. On the other hand, the lack of political respect for unwritten rules and the relative immaturity of Czech democracy confirm that constitutional conventions are as fragile (or as strong) as political actors allow. Thanks to these facts, the study of constitutional conventions in the post-communist country is a precious laboratory with universal findings even for long-existing democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction to the selection of the papers presented at a two-day workshop “The End of the Story?” Problems and Perspectives of East European Literary Studies,” held at Princeton University on 8–9 February 2013. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this day and age, it is increasingly important to ask how the cultural industries adapt to the evolution of communication technology. Recent technological changes influencing our understanding of media communication processes are discussed in various fields, with western traditions often predominating. However, the particular impact on industry dynamics is hardly universal. Specifically, the way such changes influence the dynamics of small, distinct peripheral markets remains largely underexamined. To this end, this manuscript focuses on such questions as they relate to the specificities of Central and Eastern Europe and the Czech Republic, a particularly small industry with distinct cultural proclivities. In ascertaining how media representatives/workers comprehend and engage their audiences, this paper presents a fuller understanding of the microsocial processes by which Czech media audiences are framed and conceptualized within Czech media industries and offers insights into the rationales directing the Czech media industry itself, particularly in relation to mediating the dialectic of local dynamics, international competition, and the evolution of digitalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is some indication that discrimination as well as low levels of life satisfaction render young people at risk of cyberhate victimization. Adopting a socio-ecological perspective, this paper examines whether supportive family, peer and school environments may buffer against the effects of perceived discrimination and low life satisfaction on cyberhate victimization. Data from four countries (N = 3396) of the EU Kids Online IV survey on children aged 11–17 (51% girls) revealed a positive association between perceived discrimination and cyberhate victimization, but this impact was moderated by supportive family and peer environments. A negative association between life satisfaction and cyberhate victimization was mitigated by peer support. However, no associations with the school context were found. The current study provides new insights on how social support on different levels of the social environment may buffer against potential risk factors for cyberhate victimization and can inform decision-makers towards intervention and prevention strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper brings together two streams of literature which rarely enter into conversation: diverse economies scholarship and critical readings of postsocialism. Mobilising the cases of food self-provisioning (FSP) in Czechia and agricultural cooperatives in Kyrgyzstan as an empirical basis for our reflections, we pursue a two-fold aim. Firstly, we call for attention to the postsocialist East as fertile ground for the study of diverse economies. Secondly, we offer a postcapitalist reading of postsocialism as embedded and emancipated theorising, arguing that diverse economies thinking can support novel representations of this geopolitical area and open space to appreciate economic diversity on the ground. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper addresses the issue of the constraint function and its use in methods of regional taxonomy and assessment of regional systems. It proposes an alternative definition for the constraint function for rule-based methods of functional regionalisation, such as the delineation of local labour-market areas, including alternative conceptions of the self-containment of the regions, and the trade-off between size and self-containment. An alternative constraint function has been applied in the territory of the Czech Republic as shown in the paper's illustrative example of its use from the original CURDS algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of this paper is to analyse where women run for and win seats in local councils of Czech towns between 1998 and 2018. Our results are to some extent contradictory to those from Western Europe. More importantly, this study demonstrates that strategic context impacts on women's emergence and success in local elections in a different way. First, we do not confirm that larger towns are more promising for women's representation. While more fragmented party systems in larger cities contribute to making women's candidacy more common, a large pool of female candidates does not result in their higher presence in local councils. Second, we identify openness of local environment to women, in terms of women's previous representation, as a strong determinant of female representation in Czech towns, both in terms of candidacy and success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article deals with the membership of the most important Czech political party, ANO (meaning "yes" in Czech), led by Andrej Babiš, in the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE). Our goals are to reconstruct how Babiš's party joined ALDE and to discuss the ideological differences between ANO and ALDE. The paper shows that ALDE's offer of membership in 2014 was motivated by a pragmatic need to bolster its own position in the European Parliament; ANO, meanwhile, needed to anchor itself in European politics. Andrej Babiš's technocratic and illiberal view was not apparent at the beginning, but more importantly, this did not matter to ALDE. ALDE's Czech "point of contact," ANO's foreign policy expert and the leader of its party group in the European Parliament, Pavel Telička, made ANO's membership credible. However, as a Euro-optimist, Telička was not compatible with ANO's flexible ideological character in the long term and the party group split up. A comparison of the parties' European Parliament election manifestos and positions on crucial controversial European issues clearly reveals a deep division between ALDE and ANO—and their fundamentally opposed ideological positions. We describe the findings as a new hyper-pragmatic trend in the creation of Europarties, which weakens their ideological cohesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article belongs to the special cluster, "Think Tanks in Central and Eastern Europe", guest-edited by Katarzyna Jezierska and Serena Giusti. What is the role of think tanks in Europeanization of national public spheres? To address this question, our paper explores the performance of think tanks in the immigration debate in the Czech Republic. Employing political claims analysis (PCA) and treating think tanks as boundary organizations active in multiple fields, we compare the levels of Europeanization of political claims made by think tanks with other actors. Our data set includes 2,374 political claims made on broadcast public TV in the period from April 2015 to March 2016. According to our quantitative data, Czech think tanks chose the discursive strategy of Europeanization more often than any other actor represented. Thus, think tanks have the potential to support Europeanization of national public spheres. However, their representation in media coverage is relatively low. Our results also demonstrate that think tanks should be treated as sui generis organizations since their strategy in the public sphere deviates from that of other civil society organizations. Think tanks Europeanized their claims-making, but others largely stayed on the national level while discussing the refugee crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper introduces a set of four studies focused on adolescents in the Czech Republic. In the first part, authors reflect on the cultural background, the political, social, and psychological factors that have had influence on several generations of adolescents in the period of the communist totalitarian regime. They also describe the social changes brought by the democratization of Czech society since the early 1990s. Second part of the paper reviews the life and changes in the behavior of Czech adolescents over the past 20 years. Based the findings of three studies representing three cohorts of adolescents (1992, 2001, 2010), it is argued that current Czech adolescents are becoming more like their Western peers. Compared with the 1990s adolescents, the current cohort is more realistic in their expectations, oriented more on achievement, social pleasure, and material values. Their relationship to formal authorities is weaker; especially, the relationships with parents and teachers are more liberal. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Aims: Insufficient physical activity (PA) is one of the largest public health challenges of our time and requires a multisectoral public-health response. PA recommendations state that all children and adolescents should accumulate at least 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA) daily and carry out vigorous PA (VPA) three times weekly. While participation in sports club activities is known to enhance the probability of reaching the recommended overall PA level, less is known about the contribution of sports club participation to VPA, and few cross-national comparisons have been carried out. The purpose of this paper is to study whether participation in sports club activities is associated with meeting the overall PA and VPA recommendations among children and adolescents across six European countries, namely Belgium (Flanders), Czech Republic, Finland, France, Ireland and Sweden. Methods: Analyses were carried out on existing self-reported national data sets using descriptive statistics and logistic regression. Results: Results indicate that approximately two-thirds of children and adolescents take part in sports club activities in the given countries. Sports club participants were more likely to meet the overall PA recommendations (OR 2.4–6.4) and VPA recommendation (OR 2.8–5.0) than non-participants. Conclusions: The extent to which overall PA and/or VPA is gained through sports club participation versus other settings needs to be further studied. Nonetheless, it can be argued that sports clubs have an important position in PA promotion for younger populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the lack of sufficient non-governmental prisoner re-entry services in the Czech Republic, many post-release activities are provided by faith-based organizations (FBOs). However, the Czech Republic is considered to be one of the most atheistic countries in the world. Most of the Czech population is at least apathetic toward organized religion. This study examines how re-entry FBOs present Christianity to the public in the religiously indifferent Czech Republic. The primary focus is on how the organizations present themselves to the public. We employ qualitative content analysis examining names, logos, mission statements, and other documents of 14 re-entry FBOs. The analysis reveals four general themes within the organizations' public presentations: Ambiguity when expressing religious topics, Christianity as an offer, Christianity as a form of social movement (self-legitimization), and Christianity as a pro-social lifestyle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the sources and processes of management learning in four large, former state enterprises in the Czech Republic. These enterprises have all been privatized, but have not enjoyed foreign direct investment, which is often cited as a major source of post-communist management development. The findings indicate that current managerial knowledge in the enterprises has originated from a variety of domestic and foreign sources, but that the flow of ideas has been affected by a number of important filters, arising from the complexity of the Czech context, and the motives of the enterprise managers. In particular, the paper documents the continuing role of managerial knowledge emanating from pre-1989 sources, a factor which may have crucial implications for the nature of the emerging institution of post-communist Czech management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper deals with the European dimension of the competition and contention between Czech political parties and argues that domestic party interests undermine the formal oversight of EU politics by the Czech national parliament. Within the current institutional arrangements, national political parties assume stances - which are expressed through voting - towards the European Union (and European integration as such) as they act in the arena of national parliaments that are supposed to make the EU more accountable in its activities. Based on an analysis of roll-calls, the paper focuses on the ways the political parties assume their stances towards the EU and how the parties check this act by voting on EU affairs. The paper examines factors that should shape parties' behaviour (programmes, positions in the party system, and public importance of EU/European integration issues). It also focuses on party expertise in EU/European issues and asserts that EU/European integration issues are of greater importance in extra-parliamentary party competition than inside the parliament, suggesting a democratic disconnect between voters and parliamentary behaviour. The study's empirical analysis of the voting behaviour of Czech MPs also shows that the parliamentary scrutiny introduced by the Lisbon Treaty is undermined by party interests within the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how different meanings of knowledge (transnational, comparative, statistical, local, and personal) relationally stabilise the agential position for the legitimation of educational reform across state and non-state actors. Analysing the materiality and systems of reason of proposals to reform education in the pre-election debates in the Czech Republic, the focus is placed on different patterns of legitimate and legitimating actorship, assembled from global and local relations. Through an ecological conceptualisation the research identifies the problematisation and decomposition of actorship into contradictory assemblages of both traditional actors (teachers and politicians) and relatively new ones (NGOs). The relationship of the civil sector and the state structures allowed the emergence of new non-state, non-professional actors (NGOs) who aggregate their expertise from transnational data and legitimate both their position as experts and the particular educational change. This has consequences for non-experts as politicians and teachers. The transnational and European context penetrated into the Czech educational sphere not through an elite class of system actors but through the representatives of NGOs. Rhetorically saving education from degradation, NGOs engage in spreading the transnational data and externalise the legitimation of educational reform and thus become the bearers (although agentially limited) of the European space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of 'information disorder' that undermines Western political principles has become one of the key political concerns in today's Europe and United States and led to searching for new solutions to the problemof how to fight the spread ofmis- and dis-information. The challenges of information disorder, however, are increasingly perceived as a part of the information war - which involves the intentional Russian propaganda using new media. Yet who gets to help our societies build resilience against the information war? This research looks at how this novel problematization of security affects the politics of security expertise. Or, who gains power in this 'battle for truth'? Building on sociological approaches in security studies, this paper focuses on the Czech Republic as a country that has become very active in the fight against disinformation and analyses the network of actors recognized as providing security expertise on information warfare. Based on social network analysis, the research maps the structure of social relations among actors recognized as experts and points out the empowerment of think tanks and journalists, who are able to build social capital, mobilize their knowledge of Russian politics and the new media environment, and design new practices to make the society resilient towards information warfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Day fines are an expression of equality for rich and poor alike. Although the theoretical concept of day fines (also called unit or structured fines) has been thoroughly studied, there has not been any empirical study examining the link between the amount of one day fine and the wealth of an offender, to establish whether or not day fines in reality create equality between offenders with different levels of wealth. This paper reports a study conducted in the Czech Republic, which suggests that the concept of day fines does not function without a clear formula specifying how day fines should be calculated. A comparison of all states in Europe that use day fines indicates that only two states have such a formula. The other 20 states have no formula, and thus their propensity for misusing day fines may be high. Several other characteristics of day fines, such as the number of day fines issued and the conversion rate at which unpaid fines are transformed into days in prison, are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to empirically analyse the relationship of collective identity frames to the mobilisation strategies of the Czech Romani and pro-Romani activists over the past two decades. After all, most existing analyses merely implicitly assume that this relationship exists, and explain the relationship as the result of a given political opportunity structure, but they do not examine these frames more closely. Using frame and claim-making analysis, the text traces the diachronic and synchronic development of self-naming frames and the collective action repertoire in five-year intervals (1992, 1997, 2002, 2007, and 2012). It shows that, whereas self-naming significantly changes, the activists’ action repertoire does not. Thus, the frequently postulated relationship between self-naming, strategies and activists’ priorities is not confirmed. However, the analysis does reveal that certain claims and frames are connected with certain strategies and repertoire patterns. The paper concludes with a discussion of reasons for this diversification of activist framings, which may be the result of efforts to focus on different target audiences within the multiplicity of opportunity structures and a response to the (new) availability of external sources of funding in Central and Eastern Europe countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influx of populism in Europe revived the values of illiberal, authoritarian government. This affects the democratic character of Civil–Military Relations (CMR) in the post-communist countries in particular. We analyzed the development of CMR in Czechia (1992–2022) under the influence of populism (2010–2022). Applying the CMR concept of the shared-democratic-values-perspective, our study provides empirical evidence that persistent shortcomings in formal institutional and informal socialization of Czech officers by values of democracy open a dangerous back door for spreading the values of military populism in the Czech Armed Forces. We argue that such development in the last 10 years has resulted into a formation of illiberal alliances between populist leaders and the military elite and poses a risk of the army being misused to politically support the authoritarian populist government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on transparency and contract publication in public procurement. Our main objective is to identify statistical associations between situations when a resulting contract is not publicly available and the outcomes of the procurement, esp. efficiency. By merging multiple databases and web scraping, we have created a unique dataset covering nearly 14,000 public procurements in the Czech Republic during the period 2018-2020. This dataset and recent legislation enable us to run empirical tests of new hypotheses, as well as control for variables already established in the empirical literature, such as procurement type, regime and authority. The results of our quantitative econometric models show that for selected types of projects, the unavailability of the contract is associated with smaller price savings as well as with more frequent single bid outcomes. For all types of projects, we found that failure to publish project prices is positively associated with single bid outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractMost of the existing studies on health effects from exposure to pollutants are limited in their scope. In an attempt at a more holistic approach the Government of the Czech Republic implemented a decree entitled ‘A System of Monitoring Environmental Impacts on Health of the Population of the Czech Republic’. A monitoring system comprising six parts was set up to provide data necessary for a national policy for health and protection of the environment. This paper describes work carried out on a cohort of kindergarten children in Brno, Hradec Králové, Ostrava and Plze၈ under the subsystem of the decree: ‘health consequences and risks related to air pollution’. It was found that 20% of the children monitored had long-term respiratory complaints, which, potentially, could be associated with the quality of indoor air. There were no differences between the towns, sex or age of the children related to these health problems. The study looked at various domiciliary factors including type and structure of housing, heating system, use of gas cookers, new furniture and carpets, presence of mould, pet animals and smoking indoors. Surprisingly, in families with sick children, there were fewer pets and also fewer smokers.Copyright © 2002 S. Karger AG, Basel [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to interpret recent developments in the field of adult education in the Czech Republic through the theory of social acceleration. The study is designed as focused ethnography, drawing upon observation, interviewing, and document analysis. The material is read through the concepts of acceleration and frenetic standstill and contextualized in the discourses on industry 4.0 and recognition of prior learning. The study shows how the notion of constant technological change drives the Czech discourse of adult education, introducing a sense of urgency and pressing for faster developments in the further education of adults. However, the field of adult education exhibits a lack of consistency in its development, translating into absenting sense of progress. Within this context, the Czech National Qualifications Framework (NQF) has produced a steady output of qualification standards even though its internal processes have been prolonged. The tempo of the NQF and the absenting sense of progress can be read as signs of a frenetic standstill, accompanied by a high fluctuation of individuals on all levels of an organizational hierarchy. The study argues that acceleration is not driven by technological change in the observed context as the examined discourses expect. Instead, social acceleration seems to be perpetuating itself as a relatively independent force, eroding institutions that are seen as key in adapting to the incoming transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An accurate assessment of cognitive abilities in populations that differ from the majority in cultural and linguistic characteristics is one of the main challenges in cognitive testing. Previously developed methods for assessment of the validity of cognitive scores in individuals with diverse backgrounds, such as the Culture-Language Interpretative Matrix (C-LIM), have not been empirically substantiated. We tested the applicability of the C-LIM in the European context, by comparing selected test scores from the Woodcock-Johnson-IV Test of Cognitive Abilities (WJ-IV) between Roma children aged 7–11 years (n = 399) and their counterparts from the normative population (n = 131). The largest differences were detected in WJ-IV tests requiring abstract reasoning and manipulation with complex signs. Furthermore, the C-LIM did not reliably discriminate between our groups and its use appears to be inappropriate for making diagnostic decisions about children from populations that do not traditionally rely on processes such as categorical thinking, abstract reasoning, and generalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to evaluate the moderating role of social media influence before and after the trip in Vietnam and Czech Republic. Primary data, gathered during time lag data surveys conducted among international tourists travelling to the Czech Republic and Vietnam, was analyzed with the Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) in R. The findings revealed that social media influence with higher level positively strengthened the connection between tourist motivation and the post trip destination image. Furthermore, social media had a significant moderating effect on the relationship between tourist satisfaction and ecotourism loyalty. However, there are strong differences between the destinations of developed and emerging economies. For Czech Republic, as developed economy, social media influence plays a more important role as a value-expressive mechanism at the post-trip stage whereas for the developing economy of Vietnam, social media plays a more important role as an information source before the trip. This study extends the Expectation Confirmation Theory (ECT) by introducing the moderating effect of social media influence, which first time measures this moderating effect before and after the trip accounting for the dynamic nature of the destination image as an antecedent of ecotourism loyalty. Limitations, theoretical implications, and recommendations for practice and further research are addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to understand siblinghood in old age through the perspective of Czech older adults. Forty-one in-depth interviews were analyzed, and four themes characterizing siblinghood among older persons were identified in the data: (1) Siblinghood as a unique bond, understood through genetic relatedness, the sense of belongingness, shared memories, and awareness of being the last members of the family of origin. (2) Being consanguineous and, as a result, irrevocably bonded by mutual commitments. (3) Being emotionally supportive and ready for help if needed and as resources allow. (4) The rules of doing siblinghood: the genealogical rules vs. the rule of family of procreation priority; the rule of genetic relatedness vs. the selectivity rule, or rather the preferences of particular siblings; the rules of "good siblinghood" (being interested in themselves, mutual respect, no envy). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article proposes a classification of interest promotion methods used by small EU member states which draws on lobbying literature in order for us to better understand how small states pursue their preferences in Council negotiations. It explores a single case study of the Czech Republic’s efforts to influence the 2012 revision of the European Union’s Generalised System of Preferences scheme through the lenses of this classification. The empirical part of the paper is based on original research interviews with European and Czech stakeholders who participated in the studied negotiations. While the dossier was considered important, the Czech Republic failed to employ more elaborate methods of interest promotion and thus came away with a sub-optimal outcome. Rather than explaining this by pointing to a lack of socialization of Czech representatives (and thus a lack of effective competence), this deficiency can be better explained by the low salience of the general policy area for the Czech Republic, which prevented the country from developing a favourable position from which to react promptly to the related developments and deploy the lobbying tools at its disposal. The article suggests that the lobbyist-like character of a small member state’s performance in the Council may have wider consequences for the flexibility of the country’s EU policy and the ability of its governments to pursue specific European policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the need to end anti-Semitism in Czech Republic. It talks about Neve Salom Sinagogu Vakfi, the largest place of Jewish worship in Istanbul which survived the shooting incident of 1986 and bombings in 1992 and 2003. Topics discussed are Czech sympathy towards Israelis, violence in Gaza, Israel's anger towards Turkish Jews, and identity crisis in Czech Republic.

Using a large, matched employer-employee data set, the authors investigate the impact of company and industry collective bargaining agreements on wages in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland (CE3). They also examine the changing characteristics of the union wage premium in different cohorts of establishments. Their results challenge the common idea of weak unions in the CE3 by revealing a union wage premium whose characteristics depend on the level at which collective bargaining occurs. They find that industry agreements increase wages for low-skilled workers, while company agreements increase medium- and high-skilled wages. Their second finding is that the union wage premium is unevenly distributed between cohorts, with substantial cross-country variation. Wage premiums are concentrated in the transitional cohorts in the Czech Republic and Poland and, to a lesser extent, in the pre-transitional cohort in Hungary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This impact evaluation report describes the effects of the "Parenting Program for Disadvantaged Families" in the Czech Republic. We provide a detailed look at the quantitative data on treatment and control families in a program delivered by social workers to reduce the risk of children's misconduct. Method: The study specifies the results of two waves of quantitative research based on Parenting Young Children (PARYC), Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), and items measuring parents' attitudes toward punishment of their children. Results: The results of parental self-reported competencies and parent-reported children's behavior indicate that there was a statistically significant impact of the intervention. Discussion: There was a large effect on Supporting Positive Behavior (PARYC), and Prosocial Behavior and Peer Relationship dimensions of the SDQ. Parental practices and attitudes toward punishment are further explored, although the conclusions remain ambiguous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the candidate selection process for realistic list positions with regard to multiple-office holding and personal characteristics in flexible-list proportional representation (PR) systems within the Czech context. More specifically, this issue is explored in the 2006–2017 elections to the Czech Chamber of Deputies. Results of binary logistic regression analysis with observations clustered by party or constituency indicate that incumbents (with or without multiple office holding) stand a significantly higher probability of being selected as a realistic candidate. This probability increases only if the incumbent also has the regional mandate. The results also show that candidates with a PhD degree or higher, with a higher public office position, at the age of forty-one to fifty years, or with residence in a regional capital or in Prague have a significant probability of being selected as a realistic candidate. A specific gender bias was also found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The geography of contemporary bohemia is integral to Richard Florida’s thesis of the rise of a new creative class in the USA. The strong correlation between the presence of bohemians and innovative high-tech industries in a number of American cities stands in sharp contrast to the historical image of a bohemian subculture of artists and intellectuals, defined by their antagonistic relationship to bourgeois society. Rather than a sign of social marginality, bohemian life-styles have now become a marker of the ‘new economy’, variously labeled the creative, the cultural or the aesthetic economy. In my paper I want to compare and contrast these two opposed images of bohemia – the 19th-century idea of bohemia as the libertarian other of liberal-bourgeois society and the new, highly topical economic geography of bohemia – with the following questions in mind: How and why does the 19th-century artistic critique of capitalism mutate into an expression of the new spirit of capitalism? Does this change from an antagonistic to an affirmative relationship signal the emergence of a new spirit of art that can be related to the new spirit of capitalism? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Languages vary in the type of contexts that affect prosodic prominence. This paper reports on a production study investigating how different types of foci influence prosody in Polish and Czech noun phrases. The results show that in both languages, focus and givenness are marked prosodically, with pitch and intensity as the main acoustic correlates. Like Germanic languages, Polish and Czech patterns show prosodic focus marking in a broad range of contexts and differ in this regard from other fixed-word-stress languages such as French. This suggests that (a) Polish and Czech are similar to Germanic languages and are unlike Romance languages in marking a variety of types of focus prosodically; (b) there is no close correlation between fixed word stress and lack of prosodic focus marking because Polish, which has fixed stress on the penult, shows prosodic focus marking for all types of focus; and (c) there is no straightforward relationship between flexible word order and whether focus and givenness are prosodically marked, contrary to earlier claims, because both Czech and Polish, with their relatively flexible word order, are more similar to English than Romance languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is based on a case study of a long-term public controversy over the construction of a highway bypass (around Plzeň, Czech Republic). Two principal variants of the bypass were proposed. One of them began gradually to appear preferable, increasingly attractive for experts, but remaining only on paper. In the meantime, however, the other variant became more realistic, pushed through mainly by local politicians and actually constructed. This article shows how purification of science from politics (and vice versa) played a key role in the development and ending of the case. Initial expertization of the case switched to its sharp politicization, when people got frustrated from protraction and indecisive evidence of accumulated expertise. This turned to be fatal for those who consistently staked everything on "pure facts." This article concludes by outlining some general consequences of such a development for both democratic decision making and the political relevance of expertise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper begins with a brief overview of the status of Czech services for alcohol and drug users as they existed before 1990 (during the communist era). Particular attention is directed to the prominent figure of Jaroslav Skála and the treatment and training systems he pioneered. The second section of the paper concentrates on how the system of services evolved during the 1990s, after the fall of communism, and identifies the main factors affecting this development (the ongoing reform of health care, formation of the nongovernmental nonprofit sector, emergence of a national drug policy, and the reform of social services). The paper also describes characteristics of the current system of services for legal and illegal drug users. Included here are descriptions of the types of care available (low threshold services, ambulatory and hospital care, therapeutic communities, aftercare, and substitution programs), and an overview of their utilization. Specific features and weak points in the present system are addressed in broad terms. Financing and costs are addressed, with particular attention being paid to public grants at governmental, regional, and municipal levels. The paper also pays attention to the infrastructure of the system of services (coordination, training and education, quality assurance, etc.) as well as to research needs, training and quality assurance, and the effectiveness and efficiency of services based on sound financing, in order to promote innovative programs of care and to adjust existing services to the actual needs of the target population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An interior thermal insulation system based on hydrophilic mineral wool is presented in this paper. Basic thermal and hygric parameters of the applied materials are given. The design and development of the thermal insulation system including its verification in semiscale experiments are described. Finally, an example of the application of the designed system in the reconstruction of a historical building in Prague is shown, and the results of in situ experiments are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The distribution of time that people spend in physical activity of various intensities has important health implications. Physical activity (commonly categorised by the intensity into light, moderate and vigorous physical activity), sedentary behaviour and sleep, should not be analysed separately, because they are parts of a time-use composition with a natural constraint of 24 h/day. To find out how are relative reallocations of time between physical activity of various intensities associated with health, herewith we describe compositional scalar-on-function regression and a newly developed compositional functional isotemporal substitution analysis. Physical activity intensity data can be considered as probability density functions, which better reflects the continuous character of their measurement using accelerometers. These probability density functions are characterised by specific properties, such as scale invariance and relative scale, and they are geometrically represented using Bayes spaces with the Hilbert space structure. This makes possible to process them using standard methods of functional data analysis in the L 2 space, via centred logratio (clr) transformation. The scalar-on-function regression with clr transformation of the explanatory probability density functions and compositional functional isotemporal substitution analysis were applied to a dataset from a cross-sectional study on adiposity conducted among school-aged children in the Czech Republic. Theoretical reallocations of time to physical activity of higher intensities were found to be associated with larger and more progressive expected decreases in adiposity. We obtained a detailed insight into the dose–response relationship between physical activity intensity and adiposity, which was enabled by using the compositional functional approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we present the results of the qualitative research and the thematic discourse analysis of discussions of Facebook groups of parents of pupils in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. The aim was to identify how the parents perceived the issue of distance learning during the COVID-2 pandemic and how they approached the problems that they encountered. Parents step into the role of a teacher and of a pupil; they are participants and observers of the educational process and advisors and supporters of their children. They evaluate the educational process from the didactics and the instructive point of view but they lack competencies that belong to teachers. Insufficient digital literacy and lacking equipment in households regarding ICT represent a weak point. Problems linked to the loss of social contacts and isolation are growing in number. Families also struggle with economic and logistics problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the burgeoning research on adult attachment in organizational settings has utilized assessment methods developed for personal or social relationships contexts. Here, we propose and test a novel framework for assessing attachment orientations in the workplace, the Experiences in Work Relationships—Individual (EWR-I), based on a conceptualization of the regulatory functions of attachment dynamics. Using data from two samples comprising early career starters and employees in the Czech Republic (N = 588 and N = 633) analyses confirmed the bifactorial structure of the new scale corresponding to "interpersonal hyperactivation" (involving emotional instability, negative emotionality, and lack of appreciation in work relationships) and a second factor termed "interpersonal deactivation" (involving distancing from others and relationships at work, mistrust and inhibition of positive emotionality). Evidence of convergent and discriminant validity against general relational assessments of adult attachment, and predictive and construct validity against measures of workplace personality, organizational citizenship behavior and counterproductive work behavior further documented the nature and utility of the new scale. We argue that interpersonal hyperactivation and deactivation represent two distinct and measurable key components of attachment behavior dynamics at work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the 2017 EUROCORR, the congress of the European Federation of Corrosion, combined with the 20th International Corrosion Congress and the Process Safety Congress 2017 which were held in Prague, Czech Republic from September 3-7. Topics discussed at the events included accelerated corrosion testing, corrosion of biomaterials, and nuclear corrosion.

This paper reports the experience gained in delivering continuing and postgraduate medical education by satellite to update medical teachers in Central Europe. An infrastructure of receiving sites was established in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary. The sites participated in regular, live interactive broadcasts on a range of medical education topics. Over three years a network of sites was established incrementally and a national coordinator identified for each country, who fed back from national coordinating committees to an overall steering body. In the final year a formal evaluation revealed high satisfaction levels and maintenance of activity during the grant period. The major problems related to a lack of telephone lines to facilitate interactivity, the timing of the programmes, and the need for training in medical English language. Video libraries were established, and the majority continued to be active at the end of the project grant. Material was incorporated into both undergraduate and postgraduate education. It is calculated that continuing professional development can be delivered at less than 18 ECU per participant per country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of organizational transformation has emerged from the foundations established by contingency theory and research. While institutional approaches to organizational analysis have preferred to focus on the tendency towards organizational continuity and inertia, recent developments have begun to consider institutional pressures leading to change, and to provide clues about how contingency and institutional theories might complement each other in improving our understanding of organizational change. The evidence presented in this paper, drawn from a study of organizational transformation in the Czech Republic, allows exploration of the relationship between transforming state enterprises and the wider processes of social, economic and institutional change. The values, motives and actions of the key enterprise managers are shown to be essential factors in explaining both the process of transformation in state enterprises, and the role of institutional factors in that process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Penal populism has repeatedly been described as influencing penal policies, with harsh penal practices presented as evidence of its influence. However, little attention has yet been paid to its role in the development of penal policies in post-authoritarian countries, which generally have large prison populations. Some minimal research has suggested that Central European countries were driven by penal nationalism following the 1989 revolutions. I examine this claim for the Czech Republic, using Garland (2013) 's framework of the five dimensions of a penal state. My analysis of political manifestoes shows that Czech politicians did not employ "law and order" rhetoric. The country's penal reforms were led by lenient penal elites. Nevertheless, a lack of analysis, coordination and sufficient funding resulted in a failure to properly identify or tackle the causes of the country's high imprisonment rate. Even though it gradually became more difficult to impose prison sentences, insufficient attention was paid to the length of the sentences Czech prisoners were serving. The large Czech prison population thus seems to be the result of state actors' negligence, but not of penal populism nor of penal nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The unpredictable spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, national lockdowns, and public health measures implemented in the Czech Republic had a negative effect on older adults' mental health and loneliness. The 2,631 older adults in 2020 and 2,083 older adults in 2021 used in this study formed a nationally representative sample of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). Almost every third older adult experienced feelings of loneliness in both stages of the COVID-19 outbreak. Loneliness increased in 2021 in those individuals who reported their physical health as poor, who felt nervous, sad or depressed, and who had ever left their home since the outbreak. According to age-related drivers of loneliness, feelings of loneliness were prevalent (40% vs. 45%) among younger retirees in both waves. In both data sets, declared feelings of sadness or depression were the strongest sustainable predictor of loneliness (2020 and 2021 models, OR = 3.69; 95% CI [2.90, 4.69] and OR = 2.55; [1.97, 3.30]). Being a woman and feeling nervous equated with a higher likelihood of feeling lonely compared to counterparts. Policy makers should therefore aim to carefully improve psychosocial and health-related consequences faced by this vulnerable population during the pandemic and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]